A Gentleman of France

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Remarking that their appearance and dress were not those of
vagrants, while the booths seemed to indicate little skill or
experience in the builders, I bade my companions halt, and
advanced alone.

'What is the meaning of this, my men?' I said, addressing the
first group I reached. 'You seem to have come a-Maying before
the time. Whence are you?'

'From Chateauroux,' the foremost answered sullenly. His dress,
now I saw him nearer, seemed to be that of a respectable
townsman.

'Why?' I replied. 'Have you no homes?'

'Ay, we have homes,' he answered with the same brevity.

'Then why, in God's name, are you here?' I retorted, marking the
gloomy air and downcast faces of the group. 'Have you been
harried?'

'Ay, harried by the Plague!' he answered bitterly. 'Do you mean
to say you have not heard? In Chateauroux there is one man dead
in three. Take my advice, sir--you are a brave company--turn,
and go home again.'

'Is it as bad as that?' I exclaimed. I had forgotten the
landlord's gossip, and the explanation struck me with the force
of surprise.

'Ay, is it! Do you see the blue haze?' he continued, pointing
with a sudden gesture to the lower ground before us, over which a
light pall of summery vapour hung still and motionless. 'Do you
see it? Well, under that there is death! You may find food in
Chateauroux, and stalls for your horses, and a man to take money;
for there are still men there. But cross the Indre, and you will
see sights worse than a battle-field a week old! You will find
no living soul in house or stable or church, but corpses plenty.
The land is cursed! cursed for heresy, some say! Half are dead,
and half are fled to the woods! And if you do not die of the
plague, you will starve.'

'God forbid!' I muttered, thinking with a shudder of those
before us. This led me to ask him if a party resembling ours in
number, and including two women, had passed that way. He
answered, Yes, after sunset the evening before; that their horses
were stumbling with fatigue and the men swearing in pure
weariness. He believed that they had not entered the town, but
had made a rude encampment half a mile beyond it; and had again
broken this up, and ridden southwards two or three hours before
our arrival.

'Then we may overtake them to-day?' I said.

'By your leave, sir,' he answered, with grave meaning. 'I think
you are more likely to meet them.'

Shrugging my shoulders, I thanked him shortly and left him; the
full importance of preventing my men hearing what I had heard--
lest the panic which possessed these townspeople should seize on
them also--being already in my mind. Nevertheless the thought
came too late, for on turning my horse I found one of the
foremost, a long, solemn-faced man, had already found his way to
Maignan's stirrup; where he was dilating so eloquently upon the
enemy which awaited us southwards that the countenances of half
the troopers were as long as his own, and I saw nothing for it
but to interrupt his oration by a smart application of my switch
to his shoulders. Having thus stopped him, and rated him back to
his fellows, I gave the word to march. The men obeyed
mechanically, we swung into a canter, and for a moment the danger
was over.

But I knew that it would recur again and again. Stealthily
marking the faces round me, and listening to the whispered talk
which went on, I saw the terror spread from one to another.
Voices which earlier in the day had been raised in song and
jest grew silent. Great reckless fellows of Maignan's following,
who had an oath and a blow for all comers, and to whom the
deepest ford seemed to be child's play, rode with drooping heads
and knitted brows; or scanned with ill-concealed anxiety the
strange haze before us, through which the roofs of the town, and
here and there a low hill or line of poplars, rose to plainer
view. Maignan himself, the stoutest of the stout, looked grave,
and had lost his swaggering air. Only three persons preserved
their SANG-FROID entire. Of these, M. d'Agen rode as if he had
heard nothing, and Simon Fleix as if he feared nothing; while
Fanchette, gazing eagerly forward, saw, it was plain, only one
object in the mist, and that was her Mistress's face.

'We found the gates of the town open, and this, which proved to
be the herald of stranger sights, daunted the hearts of my men
more than the most hostile reception. As we entered, our horses'
hoofs, clattering loudly on the pavement, awoke a hundred echoes
in the empty houses to right and left. The main street, flooded
with sunshine, which made its desolation seem a hundred times
more formidable, stretched away before us, bare and empty; or
haunted only by a few slinking dogs, and prowling wretches, who
fled, affrighted at the unaccustomed sounds, or stood and eyed us
listlessly as me passed. A bell tolled; in the distance we heard
the wailing of women. The silent ways, the black cross which
marked every second door, the frightful faces which once or twice
looked out from upper windows and blasted our sight, infected my
men with terror so profound and so ungovernable that at last
discipline was forgotten; and one shoving his horse before
another in narrow places, there was a scuffle to be first. One,
and then a second, began to trot. The trot grew into a shuffling
canter. The gates of the inn lay open, nay seemed to invite us
to enter; but no one turned or halted. Moved by a single impulse
we pushed breathlessly on and on, until the open country was
reached, and we who had entered the streets in silent awe, swept
out and over the bridge as if the fiend were at our heels.

That I shared in this flight causes me no shame even now, for my
men were at the time ungovernable, as the best-trained troops are
when seized by such panics; and, moreover, I could have done no
good by remaining in the town, where the strength of the
contagion was probably greater and the inn larder like to be as
bare, as the hillside. Few towns are without a hostelry outside
the gates for the convenience of knights of the road or those who
would avoid the dues, and Chateauroux proved no exception to this
rule. A short half-mile from the walls we drew rein before a
second encampment raised about a wayside house. It scarcely
needed the sound of music mingled with brawling voices to inform
us that the wilder spirits of the town had taken refuge here, and
were seeking to drown in riot and debauchery, as I have seen
happen in a besieged place, the remembrance of the enemy which
stalked abroad in the sunshine. Our sudden appearance, while it
put a stop to the mimicry of mirth, brought out a score of men
and women in every stage of drunkenness and dishevelment, of whom
some, with hiccoughs and loose gestures, cried to us to join
them, while others swore horridly at being recalled to the
present, which, with the future, they were endeavouring to
forget.

I cursed them in return for a pack of craven wretches, and
threatening to ride down those who obstructed us, ordered my men
forward; halting eventually a quarter of a mile farther on, where
a wood of groundling oaks which still wore last year's leaves
afforded fair shelter. Afraid to leave my men myself, lest some
should stray to the inn and others desert altogether, I requested
M. d'Agen to return thither with Maignan and Simon, and bring us
what forage and food we required. This he did with perfect
success, though not until after a scuffle, in which Maignan
showed himself a match for a hundred. We watered the horses at a
neighbouring brook, and assigning two hours to rest and
refreshment--a great part of which M. d'Agen and I spent walking
up and down in moody silence, each immersed in his own thoughts--
we presently took the road again with renewed spirits.

But a panic is not easily shaken off, nor is any fear so
difficult to combat and defeat as the fear of the invisible. The
terrors which food and drink had for a time thrust out presently
returned with sevenfold force. Men looked uneasily in one
another's faces, and from them to the haze which veiled all
distant objects. They muttered of the heat, which was sudden,
strange, and abnormal at that time of the year. And by-and-by
they had other things to speak of. We met a man, who ran beside
us and begged of us, crying out in a dreadful voice that his wife
and four children lay unburied in the house. A little farther
on, beside a well, the corpse of a woman with a child at her
breast lay poisoning the water; she had crawled to it to appease
her thirst, and died of the draught. Last of all, in, a beech-
wood near Lotier we came upon a lady living in her coach, with
one or two panic-stricken women for her only attendants. Her
husband was in Paris, she told me; half her servants were dead,
the rest had fled. Still she retained in a remarkable degree
both courage and courtesy, and accepting with fortitude my
reasons and excuses for perforce leaving her in such a plight,
gave me a clear account of Bruhl and his party, who had passed
her some, hours before. The picture of this lady gazing after us
with perfect good-breeding, as we rode away at speed, followed by
the lamentations of her women, remains with me to this day;
filling my mind at once with admiration and melancholy. For, as
I learned later, she fell ill of the plague where we left her in
the beech-wood, and died in a night with both her servants.

The intelligence we had from her inspired us to push forward,
sparing neither spur nor horseflesh, in the hope that we might
overtake Bruhl before night should expose his captives to fresh
hardships and dangers. But the pitch to which the dismal sights
and sounds I have mentioned, and a hundred like them, had raised
the fears of my following did much to balk my endeavours. For a
while, indeed, under the influence of momentary excitement, they
spurred their horses to the gallop, as if their minds were made
up to face the worst; but presently they checked them despite all
my efforts, and, lagging slowly and more slowly, seemed to lose
all spirit and energy. The desolation which met our eyes on
every side, no less than the death-like stillness which
prevailed, even the birds, as it seemed to us, being silent,
chilled the most reckless to the heart. Maignan's face lost its
colour, his voice its ring. As for the rest, starting at a sound
and wincing if a leather galled them, they glanced backwards
twice for once they looked forwards, and held themselves ready to
take to their heels and be gone at the least alarm.

Noting these signs, and doubting if I could trust even Maignan, I
thought it prudent to change my place, and falling to the rear,
rode there with a grim face and a pistol ready to my hand. It
was not the least of my annoyances that M. d'Agen appeared to be
ignorant of any cause for apprehension save such as lay before
us, and riding on in the same gloomy fit which had possessed him
from the moment of starting, neither sought my opinion nor gave
his own, but seemed to have undergone so complete and mysterious
a change that I could think of one thing only that could have
power to effect so marvellous a transformation. I felt his
presence a trial rather than a help, and reviewing the course of
our short friendship, which a day or two before had been so great
a delight to me--as the friendship of a young man commonly is to
one growing old--I puzzled myself with much wondering whether
there could be rivalry between us.

Sunset, which was welcome to my company, since it removed the
haze, which they regarded with superstitious dread, found us
still plodding through a country of low ridges and shallow
valleys, both clothed in oak-woods. Its short brightness died
away, and with it my last hope of surprising Bruhl before I
slept. Darkness fell upon us as we wended our way slowly down a
steep hillside where the path was so narrow and difficult as to
permit only one to descend at a time. A stream of some size, if
we might judge from the noise it made, poured through the ravine
below us, and presently, at the point where we believed the
crossing to be, we espied a solitary light shining in the
blackness. To proceed farther was impossible, for the ground
grew more and more precipitous; and, seeing this, I bade Maignan
dismount, and leaving us where we were, go for a guide to the
house from which the light issued.

He obeyed, and plunging into the night, which in that pit;
between the hills was of an inky darkness, presently returned
with a peasant and a lanthorn. I was about to bid the man guide
us to the ford, or to some level ground where we could picket the
horses, when Maignan gleefully cried out that he had news. I
asked what news.

'Speak up, MANANT!' he said, holding up his lanthorn so that the
light fell on the man's haggard face and unkempt hair. 'Tell his
Excellency what you have told me, or I will skin you alive,
little man!'

'Your other party came to the ford an hour before sunset,' the
peasant answered, staring dully at us. 'I saw them coming, and
hid myself. They quarrelled by the ford. Some were for
crossing, and some not.'

'They had ladies with them?' M. d'Agen said suddenly.

'Ay, two, your Excellency,' the clown answered, 'riding like men.
In the end they did not cross for fear of the plague, but turned
up the river, and rode westwards towards St. Gaultier.'

'St. Gaultier!' I said, 'Where is that? Where does the road to
it go to besides?'

But the peasant's knowledge was confined to his own
neighbourhood. He knew no world beyond St. Gaultier, and could
not answer my question. I was about to bid him show us the way
down, when Maignan cried out that he knew more.

'What?' I asked.

'Arnidieu! he heard them say where they were going to spend the
night!'

'Ha!' I cried. 'Where?'

'In an old ruined castle two leagues from this, and between here
and St. Gaultier,' the equerry answered, forgetting in his
triumph both plague and panic. 'What do you say to that, your
Excellency? It is so, sirrah, is it not?' he continued, turning
to the peasant. 'Speak, Master Jacques, or I will roast you
before a slow fire!'

But I did not wait to hear the answer. Leaping to the ground, I
took the Cid's rein on my arm, and cried impatiently to the man
to lead us down.

CHAPTER XXVIII.

THE CASTLE ON THE HILL.

The certainty that Bruhl and his captives were not far off, and
the likelihood that we might be engaged within the hour, expelled
from the minds of even the most timorous among us the vapourish
fears which had before haunted them. In the hurried scramble
which presently landed us on the bank of the stream, men who had
ridden for hours in sulky silence found their voices, and from
cursing their horses' blunders soon advanced to swearing and
singing after the fashion of their kind. This change, by
relieving me of a great fear, left me at leisure to consider our
position, and estimate more clearly than I might have done the
advantages of hastening, or postponing, an attack. We numbered
eleven; the enemy, to the best of my belief, twelve. Of this
slight superiority I should have reeked little in the daytime;
nor, perhaps, counting Maignan as two, have allowed that it
existed. But the result of a night attack is more difficult to
forecast; and I had also to take into account the perils to which
the two ladies would be exposed, between the darkness and tumult,
in the event of the issue remaining for a time in doubt.

These considerations, and particularly the last, weighed so
powerfully with me, that before I reached the bottom of the gorge
I had decided to postpone the attack until morning. The answers
to some questions which I put to the inhabitant of the house by
the ford as soon as I reached level ground only confirmed me in
this resolution. The road Bruhl had taken ran for a distance by
the riverside, and along the bottom of the gorge; and, difficult
by day, was reported to be impracticable for horses by night.
The castle he had mentioned lay full two leagues away, and on the
farther edge of a tract of rough woodland. Finally, I doubted
whether, in the absence of any other reason for delay, I could
have marched my men, weary as they were, to the place before
daybreak.

When I came to announce this decision, however, and to inquire
what accommodation the peasant could afford us, I found myself in
trouble. Fanchette, mademoiselle's woman, suddenly confronted
me, her face scarlet with rage. Thrusting herself forward into
the circle of light cast by the lanthorn, she assailed me with a
virulence and fierceness which said more for her devotion to her
mistress than her respect for me. Her wild gesticulations, her
threats, and the appeals which she made now to me, and now to the
men who stood in a circle round us, their faces in shadow,
discomfited as much as they surprised me.

'What!' she cried violently, 'you call yourself a gentleman, and
lie here and let my mistress be murdered, or worse, within a
league of you! Two leagues? A groat for your two leagues! I
would walk them barefoot, if that would shame you. And you, you
call yourselves men, and suffer it! It is God's truth you are a
set of cravens and sluggards. Give me as many women, and I
would--'

'Peace, woman!' Maignan said in his deep voice. 'You had your
way and came with us, and you will obey orders as well as
another! Be off, and see to the victuals before worse happen to
you!'

'Ay, see to the victuals!' she retorted. 'See to the victuals,
forsooth! That is all you think of--to lie warm and eat your
fill! A set of dastardly, drinking, droning guzzlers you are!
You are!' she retorted, her voice rising to a shriek. 'May the
plague take you!'

'Silence!' Maignan growled fiercely, 'or have a care to
yourself! For a copper-piece I would send you to cool your heels
in the water below--for that last word! Begone, do you hear,' he
continued, seizing her by the shoulder and thrusting her towards
the house, 'or worse may happen to you. We are rough customers,
as you will find if you do not lock up your tongue!'

I heard her go wailing into the darkness; and Heaven knows it was
not without compunction I forced myself to remain inactive in the
face of a devotion which seemed so much greater than mine. The
men fell away one by one to look to their horses and choose
sleeping-quarters for the night; and presently M. d'Agen and I
were left alone standing beside the lanthorn, which the man had
hung on a bush before his door. The brawling of the water as it
poured between the banks, a score of paces from us, and the black
darkness which hid everything beyond the little ring of light in
which we stood--so that for all we could see we were in a pit--
had the air of isolating us from all the world.

I looked at the young man, who had not once lisped that day; and
I plainly read in his attitude his disapproval of my caution.
Though he declined to meet my eye, he stood with his arms folded
and his head thrown back, making no attempt to disguise the scorn
and ill-temper which his face expressed. Hurt by the woman's
taunts, and possibly shaken in my opinion, I grew restive under
his silence, and unwisely gave way to my feelings.

'You do not appear to approve of my decision, M. d'Agen?' I
said.

'It is yours to command, sir,' he answered proudly.

There are truisms which have more power to annoy than the veriest
reproaches. I should have borne in mind the suspense and anxiety
he was suffering, and which had so changed him that I scarcely
knew him for the gay young spark on whose toe I had trodden. I
should have remembered that he was young and I old, and that it
behoved me to be patient. But on my side also there was anxiety,
and responsibility as well; and, above all, a rankling soreness,
to which I refrain from giving the name of jealousy, though it
came as near to that feeling as the difference in our ages and
personal advantages (whereof the balance was all on his side)
would permit. This, no doubt, it was which impelled me to
continue the argument.

'You would go on?' I said persistently.

'It is idle to say what I would do,' he answered with a flash of
anger.

'I asked for your opinion, sir,' I rejoined stiffly.

'To what purpose?' he retorted, stroking his small moustache
haughtily, 'We look at the thing from opposite points. You, are
going about your business, which appears to be the rescuing of
ladies who are--may I venture to say it? so unfortunate as to
entrust themselves to your charge. I, M. de Marsac, am more
deeply interested. More deeply interested,' he repeated lamely.
'I--in a word, I am prepared, sir, to do what others only talk
of--and if I cannot follow otherwise, would follow on my feet!'

'Whom?' I asked curtly, stung by this repetition of my own
words.

He laughed harshly and bitterly. 'Why explain? or why quarrel?'

he replied cynically. 'God knows, if I could afford to quarrel
with you, I should have done so fifty hours ago. But I need your
help; and, needing it, I am prepared to do that which must seem
to a person of your calm passions and perfect judgment alike
futile and incredible--pay the full price for it.'

'The full price for it!' I muttered, understanding nothing,
except that I did not understand.

'Ay, the full price for it!' he repeated. And as he spoke he
looked at me with an expression of rage so fierce that I recoiled
a step. That seemed to restore him in some degree to himself,
for without giving me an opportunity of answering he turned
hastily from me, and, striding away, was in a moment lost in the
darkness.

He left me amazed beyond measure. I stood repeating his phrase
about 'the full price' a hundred times over, but still found it
and his passion inexplicable. To cut the matter short, I could
come to no other conclusion than that he desired to insult me,
and aware of my poverty and the equivocal position in which I
stood towards mademoiselle, chose his words accordingly. This
seemed a thing unworthy of one of whom I had before thought
highly; but calmer reflection enabling me to see something of
youthful bombast in the tirade he had delivered, I smiled a
little sadly, and determined to think no more of the matter for
the present, but to persist firmly in that which seemed to me to
be the right course.

Having settled this, I was about to enter the house, when Maignan
stopped me, telling me that the plague had killed five people in
it, letting only the man we had seen; who had, indeed, been
seized, but recovered. This ghastly news had scared my company
to such a degree that they had gone as far from the house as the
level ground permitted, and there lighted a fire, round which
they were going to pass the night. Fanchette had taken up her
quarters in the stable, and the equerry announced that he had
kept a shed full of sweet, hay for M. d'Agen and myself. I
assented to this arrangement, and after supping off soup and
black bread, which was all we could procure, bade the peasant
rouse us two hours before sunrise; and so, being too weary and
old in service to remain awake thinking, I fell asleep, and
slept; soundly till a little after four.

My first business on rising was to see that the men before
mounting made a meal, for it is ill work fighting empty. I went
round also and saw that all had their arms, and that such as
carried pistols had them loaded and primed. Francois did not put
in an appearance until this work was done, and then showed a very
pale and gloomy countenance. I took no heed of him, however, and
with the first streak of daylight we started in single file and
at a snail's pace up the valley, the peasant, whom I placed in
Maignan's charge, going before to guide us, and M. d'Agen and I
riding in the rear. By the time the sun rose and warmed our
chilled and shivering frames we were over the worst of the
ground, and were able to advance at some speed along a track cut
through a dense forest of oak-trees.

Though we had now risen out of the valley, the close-set trunks
and the undergrowth round them prevented our seeing in any
direction. For a mile or more we rode on blindly, and presently
started on finding ourselves on the brow of a hill, looking down
into a valley, the nearer end of which was clothed in woods,
while the farther widened into green sloping pastures. From the
midst of these a hill or mount rose sharply up, until it ended in
walls of grey stone scarce to be distinguished at that distance
from the native rock on which they stood.

'See!' cried our guide. 'There is the castle!'

Bidding the men dismount in haste, that the chance of our being
seen by the enemy--which was not great--might be farther
lessened, I began to inspect the position at leisure; my first
feeling while doing so being one of thankfulness that I had not
attempted a night attack, which must inevitably have miscarried,
possibly with loss to ourselves, and certainly with the result of
informing the enemy of our presence. The castle, of which we had
a tolerable view, was long and narrow in shape, consisting of two
towers connected by walls, The nearer tower, through which lay
the entrance, was roofless, and in every way seemed to be more
ruinous than the inner one, which appeared to be perfect in both
its stories. This defect notwithstanding, the place was so
strong that my heart sank lower the longer I looked; and a glance
at Maignan's face assured me that his experience was also at
fault. For M. d'Agen, I clearly saw, when I turned to him, that
he had never until this moment realised what we had to expect,
but, regarding our pursuit in the light of a hunting-party, had
looked to see it end in like easy fashion. His blank, surprised
face, as he stood eyeing the stout grey walls, said as much as
this.

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